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... something similar to /dev/null, but that just blocks all bytes that are written to it?

What I need is a trick to hold an arbitrary executable in memory by blocking its output. Pipes don't seem to be usable, because the output gets written to a buffer first.

Armin
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1 Answers1

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You can create a named pipe (fifo) using mkfifo. Writes to this type of special file will block until a process reads from it.

$ mkfifo blocker
$ echo hello > blocker # "hangs"

In another session:

$ cat blocker
hello                  # the `echo` above unblocks after this
Mat
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